yo mama!

life with the navajo through images, words + wheat paste.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

ahhh, the feeling of pasting on a beautiful spring day in northern arizona...

outside flagstaff photography center

too much stress. i was worried about pasting directly onto the walls of the flagstaff photography center, concerned about the cost for a lift to put the big piece up outside and the cost for taking it down. all this money could be spent on getting images up on the reservation where they'll get a lot of views from passing traffic. however, jason prevailed. we met with jim babbit a week ago. he's the owner of the building where fpc is and is cool with me pasting on the beautiful red brick.

his family build several trading posts on the reservation in the late 1800s. when jason and i approached him about pasting the babbit building on heritage square, i showed him the pasting of the red lake trading post. his family built that one in 1891. he dug the photo and still knows the store manager, lorenzo fowler. i ran into jim today just after i finished pasting his building.

red lake trading post

jason thought it'd be a good idea to do an installation on the red brick of the babbit building as well as inside to get some idea of how difficult it'll be to get the images off. i opted not to add wood glue to the paste so it was back to old school, edible, biodegradable wheat paste, my favorite. the images stuck pretty well indoors and out. (see above.)

while driving into town this morning i was flooded with more good ideas for the show. now, i'm getting excited though a bit stressed at the thought of all i need to do. kinko's wasn't able to complete my first order of prints for the show so i'll have to pick them up next week when i return from san francisco. (i hope to see shows by my main man, blek le rat, with above. i think gaia's show will still be up as well. hopefully, i'll get inspired with even more ideas.

regardless, it was a stunningly beautiful day, blue sky, crispy morning air, birds chirping and people totally ignoring me as i went about putting the lamb and kid up. that's one thing i like about the rez - people will stop their trucks and get out and engage you to find out what you're up to. in town, different vibe. very interesting that. maybe they don't know how to react to an old black man installing wheat pasted art. i mean really, it's not something you see everyday. or is it? hmmm...